By Gunnar Thovaldsen, Norwegian Historical Data Centre.
"Migration is becoming the most important branch of
demography," wrote T.-H. Hollingsworth in 1970. And sure
enough, during the next decade quite a number of books and
articles appeared on both historical and contemporary
migration research. Even so, this vast field was far from
thoroughly explored, several local studies being started and
concluded during the next decade also. That extensive
migration has been going on regularly in most places for
several centuries, has for long been an established fact. We
had, however, to wait until recently for a comprehensive
historical overview of migration in Europe as a whole. Earlier
attempts were either cursory attempts in model-building or
sociologically oriented surveys where historical migration
research played second fiddle.²

Leslie Page Moch's book is divided chronologically into four
parts. The first is called "Migration in Preindustrial Europe"
and extends from around 1650 to 1750. Increasing population
growth introduces the second period with a special focus on
rural industry. The period from around 1815 to 1914 is singled
out for treatment as "Migration in an Age of Urbanization and
Industrialization". Finally, the fourth part deals with
migration in our own century, starting with the First World
War. The fact that war opens three of these periods is not
accidental, since it always makes many people change their
habitat involuntarily. For each of these periods Page Moch has
in addition chosen to describe voluntary migration within some
selected countries and regions in Europe, either because these
are seen as especially significant, representative or well
researched. Given the long time span treated, it is natural
that the regional perspective is more important than the
national. A further necessary limitation is the focus on
Western rather than Eastern Europe. A coverage of all
migration flows known in Europe would either be impossible or
at best superficial.

An overview of migration has to take into consideration both
patterns (who moved, in what numbers from where to where, and
processes (why did people move, how did they travel and what
were the effects of migration for the places they left and the
places where they settled). Migration too can be studied at
many levels: within the parish; between towns; between town
and countryside; between regions, countries and continents.
There are individuals, families, groups and societies to
consider along with their economic and demographic structures.
Mortality and fertility decline, industrialization and
urbanization had profound effects on the patterns of
migration. Since the exodus from the countryside to the cities
is the author's special field, this is naturally a central and
recurring theme throughout the book.

But this book is not pure social history, in the sense of
history with the politics left out. For the state influenced
migration both through downright persecution; land reforms;
taxation; military conscription; the waging of wars;
mercantile politics; imperialism. Such forces set people
moving. In addition the factors that separated the migrants
from the stayers must be explained. Here the personal
information fields based on social relations are paramount,
but social status; occupation; age; civil status and gender
also play important roles. The author deserves praise for
systematically explaining how the different roles of men and
women in the labour force and in reproduction, influence their
different migration behaviours.

Leslie Page Moch's definition of migration is a wide one,
stretching from intercontinental emigration to seasonal short-
distance movements. Different types of migration are
categorized according to the model Charles Tilly devised in
1977. There is local migration within the home market,
circular migration between neighbouring parishes; chain
migration over longer distances involving help from relations
at the destination; and career migration for people whose
specific skills were required elsewhere. There is of course no
clear-cut distinction between these migration types, with the
one often evolving into the other over time.

It is Page Moch's credit that she has employed a comparative
perspective, even though migration studies are not based on a
fixed set of methods and sources like those of fertility,
nuptiality and mortality. Traditionally, researchers have used
a variety of source material, although as most of it is cross-
sectional, only the net or result migration over a period can
be measured. Longitudinal sources and methods have for some
regions allowed historians to assess gross migration, that is
all in- and out-migration to and from an area. Studies based
on such sources cover only limited parts of Europe during the
nineteenth century, but have shown that the volume of
migration is seriously underestimated in cross-sectional
material.

Was this the case in preindustrial Europe as well? The
traditional view of preindustrial society was one of a
sedentary and self-sufficient life in the countryside with
economic stagnation, agricultural crises, high mortality and
small population growth. From this early age we have only a
few sources that address migration directly, but local studies
have given us some answers about the volume and character of
migration. The preindustrial era saw migration caused by
persecution and war on a scale that was not repeated until the
twentieth century. The expulsion of Jews from Spain in the
fifteenth century, the exodus of the Huguenots into and out of
Alsace and the emigration of English protestants are well-
known examples. The Thirty Years' War and other wars together
with imperialism, created a void of manpower that gave
opportunities for migrants. It has been estimated that 200,000
French people worked in Spain while the two countries were at
war in 1655. Seasonal migrants were essential parts of the
workforce in the few prosperous areas of Europe. A very
interesting system of migration was the one between the
central highlands of France and Spain that started around
fifteen hundred and lasted until Napoleon attacked Spain. Abel
Poitrineau has thoroughly investigated this profitable flow of
men.

In rural England it has been shown that a clear majority of
men and women left their parish of birth, while only a small
minority left for another county. This kind of migration is
called circular, having small impact on the distribution of
the population, but all the same providing important
experience for each individual concerned. With a high age at
marriage and a large proportion who never married, many were
free to move all but annually in connection with rural
service. Illiterate and propertyless they have, however, left
few traces in written source material. Marriage records have
been used, but they underestimate migration since the labour
market was much wider than the marriage market. Impartible
inheritance and primogeniture were common, but even so
peasants were more stable than the landless. Whether the use
of marriage records or the higher proportion of peasants in
France explains the picture of lower migration rates there as
compared to England, remains to be seen. There can, however,
be no doubt about the high mobility found by David Gaunt among
the tenant farmers in Sweden.

Systems of migration centred on rapidly growing London, Paris
and Amsterdam. Dutch dairy production for export demanded
cattle, cattle demanded hay, and this was harvested by
seasonal migrants from Westphalia whose own farms were too
small to support them. These so called "Hollandsgänger" kept
walking back and forth between the two areas each summer
during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. But also the
influx of more stable migrants to the Dutch capital both from
within the Netherlands and overseas was enormous. For example
60% of its sailors were foreigners, with Norwegians from
Sørlandet the second largest nationality. With a death rate of
70% at sea and in the colonies, the East India Company was
dependent on a steady influx of migrants from abroad. Even so
Amsterdam grew from 30,000 to 200,000 inhabitants during the
century following 1650. No wonder between one third and one
fourth of the city's marriage partners were foreigners. Apart
from sailors many of them had come as young servant women.

Moch takes protoindustry as her starting point for the second
period (1750-1815) i.e. the manufacturing in the countryside
of goods which were sold in the towns. It was at about this
time that the European population started to grow
dramatically, especially in England, even though transatlantic
emigration had started. This was due not only to the new
industry providing the wherewithal for a lower age at marriage
and higher fertility; fewer famines and wars meant reduced
mortality. This caused increased population pressure and
proletarianization. The number of peasants in England was
further reduced through the enclosure movement, while in
France only the relative number of peasants declined.

The rural protoindustry chiefly produced thread, cloth, nails
and tools, with wool being the most important product in
England, linen on the continent. Through the manufacturing
system the entrepreneurs in the towns could exploit the
abundant work force in the countryside. Consequently the
industrializing villages increased in population, as out-
migration was reduced while in-migration and fertility
increased.

The seven major systems of migration centred on the Paris
basin, Holland, the London area, Italy's central plain with
Rome and Corsica, the Po Valley, Madrid/Castille and the West-
Mediterranean plain. Many seasonal migrants did heavy
agricultural jobs or worked as masons in the cities. With the
money they earned, they first paid their debts and taxes, then
bought additional land. But for an increasing number of people
temporary departures fostered permanent emigration, a pointer
towards the exodus to the urban centres in the nineteenth
century. Little by little the seasonally migrating peasants
became proletarianized by their dependency on additional
income. ("... temporary expedients imperceptibly became a
proletarian life." Charles Tilly has said.) Early industry
"flourished best not as town or country, but as a
complementary system involving both rural and urban places..."
to quote Hohenberg and Lees. Most in-migrants came to the
manufacturing villages, but low net-migration to the marketing
towns hides much in- and out-migration according to the birth
places given in the French marital records. The late
eighteenth century was an age of growth for the middle sized
towns that were hubs in the networks of rural industry. In
this period, however, people from poor agricultural areas
could still move to get industrial work in the countryside.

As population increased rapidly after 1750, the number of
migrants who moved on their own grew larger. This easily
verged into vagabondage, and they were protected neither from
the accusations of the courts nor from thieves by family
connections or participation in a migration system with others
from the same village. Also, young women who had migrated as
servants to towns, when pregnant were often not able to ensure
the fulfilment of their partners' promise to marry them
without support from relatives. This lack of close social
relations may be the chief explanation behind the correlation
that many sociologists have found between migration and
"anomie".

In the third period (1815-1914) the interrelationship between
town and countryside is even more crucial if we are to
understand the vast movement to cities and towns in the age of
industrialization. Students of urbanization have focused on
the cities themselves, but the rapid increase in the
population and consequent reduction in the relative number of
landowners are fundamental factors behind the exodus from the
countryside. When mortality was lowered by better nutrition,
the relative absence of wars and a more favourable epidemic
climate, it was the proletariat that grew the fastest. At the
same time farmers tended to specialize their production on a
couple of crops, e.g. sugar beet or wine, which they had to
reap within a short time span. Especially after the
mechanization of the winter work of threshing, it no longer
payed to hire farm servants on an annual basis: better to
employ the necessary number of migratory labourers for the
season. (Here Page Moch forgets to mention that this very
development was made possible by the abundance of such
workers.) We should bear in mind that the construction of
improved transportation infrastructure made people both more
mobile and expanded the chances for temporary employment.

Towns offered better conditions for more advanced methods of
production against which rural protoindustry could not
compete. However, as much urban work to start with was
seasonal, it could be fitted in with part-time work in the
countryside. This created systems of circular migration with
people taking up tasks such as masonry or dressmaking in the
towns, but returning to the family landholding for the
harvests. Over time circular migration tended to develop into
chain migration when relatives and friends helped newcomers
find more permanent positions in urban employment.

Moch describes three archetypal cities. Of these, the textile
town offered employment for whole families resulting in very
high birth rates. This produced a level of natural population
increase sufficient to lessen the town's dependence on the
supply of in-migrants. The city of heavy industry, on the
other hand, attracted more young men and had very high
population turnover with extreme rates of in- and out-
migration. The commercial and administrative city as a rule
developed more slowly out of towns that had long-standing
traditions of providing services for their surrounding
regions. A low proportion of men and low birth rates combined
with relatively low rates of migration, resulted in modest
population growth.

Even if the book's main focus is on internal migration,
emigration to the Americas is treated in a synthesis the merit
of which is its comprehensiveness rather than any new
perspective. Moch stresses regional differences within each
country together with the multiplier effect inherent in the
social relations between the growing number of immigrants and
the potential emigrants left behind. "A Global Labor Force"
could choose between clearing their own farm or working in
well-paid jobs in American industry. As time went by more
immigrants chose to travel home after a while, setting up an
international system of circular migration.

The last chapter renders a historian's view on migration in
the twentieth century. This subject has been extensively
researched and debated by social scientists, especially
geographers. Moch's perspective is that of continuity. When
the Iron Curtain blocked the flow of migration from Eastern to
Western Europe, it was only natural that the constant need for
"guest workers" should instead be satisfied from more southern
countries. For example West Germany negotiated recruiting
agreements with Turkey, Morocco, Portugal, Tunisia and
Yugoslavia shortly after the construction of the Berlin wall.
And when these ethnically distinct workers did not integrate
easily at the destination, it was only to be expected that
they should bring their families along. After all, migrant
people have always either been integrated or gone home to
marry. One cannot expect them to live single forever.

A few critical remarks are pertinent towards the end of this
review. A printing error(?) puts the armistice of the Great
War in 1919 (page 165). The statement that "Scandinavian
emigrants most likely came from the mountains of south-central
Norway and south-central Sweden ..." (page 149) sounds rather
imprecise to a Scandinavian reader. For people who do not know
the topography of the Scandinavian peninsula very well, the
sentence must be grossly misleading. There is no reason to
believe that these examples are typical of the reliability of
the information in the book. But the reader should be alert,
especially when Moch treats migration outside her own primary
areas of research, i.e. urban migration in France.

This preoccupation also seems to have influenced Moch's
selection of migration research for presentation. For instance
Wrigley's fundamental article on the role of London in
changing the English society is only listed in the
bibliography, not presented in the book. And when Moch does
not list the overview of Scandinavian long-distance migration
presented by Johansen, Ostergren and Åkerman at the
International Congress of Historical Sciences in Madrid, it
tells us that her knowledge of important migration literature
has its limitations. One important current of migration that
the book does not deal with, is that of the fishermen along
the Atlantic coast of Europe. But here Moch may be excused by
the fact that results from research on this migration current
is emerging only now.

My last and most serious criticism concerns the use of Charles
Tilly's migration model in the book. In some sections Moch
states how people's moving about fits within the model and how
the model can explain the development of migration patterns
over time. There is, however, no systematic attempt to test
the model against empirical results that are presented in the
book. In my opinion, a more critical attitude towards the
model on the part of the author would have shown that this
model, like most theoretical frameworks, has serious
shortcomings when confronted with extensive historical
evidence.

Despite these critical remarks, I must conclude that Leslie
Page Moch has written a very valuable and useful book, which
no student of European migration can afford to be without.

Footnotes:

¹I want to thank professor Michael Drake for correcting my English.

²Cf Charles Tilly: "Migration in modern European history", in
Time Space and Man, 1979 and Günther Albrecht:
Die Soziologie der Geographischen Mobilitet 1972.